The article and both blog posts got me to thinking, especially Mohler's post entitled "Deliberate Childlessness: Moral Rebellion." In this post Mohler picks and chooses his examples of married couples who decide not to have children to make them seem as selfish as possible. All of his potential parents state their logic as desire to not interfere with their busy lifestyles. Well, in the course of my undergraduate work, I have met a few couples who have gotten married without the desire to have children, most of them basing their decision on global problems such as the food shortage and overpopulation problems. If you read Moehler's blog, you would never know such a rationale existed.
Of course there's Mohler's other blog: "The Real Population Threat," which claims that the decline in birthrates strains healthcare and global economics by creating the need to support a disproportionate number of nonworking elderly people. Now, this is a legitimate problem, that is not where I take issue with Mohler's logic. It is his solution that I find difficult to swallow, as I beleieve that the problem is largely one of changing reality. Not only are birth rates lower, people are living longer. Maybe the true attitude of Christian stewardship is to work longer, delaying retirement to keep up with the prolonged life expectancy. This keeps workers out of retirement savings untl closer to death, which puts less of a strain on Social Security and the shrinking working class. Another thing Mohler and his cohorts fail to understand is that the problem of the dispropotionate amount of elderly people, if current trends continue, is temporary. Eventually the childless senior citizens who are children of the old age of boundless birthrates will die off and the population will stabalize somewhat, creating a world with a stable population. (Throw in a plague here or there, and we may even see populations shrink). The world cannot support the boundless population growth Mohler wants, and eventually we will pay the price if we heed his words.
Then there's the idea of keeping up with Islam's rate of child birth. This argument is flawed because it sees other religions as something that we must compete with. This is given to the old missiological school of thought called traditional triumphalism. The problem with triumphalism is that it lacks the humility of Christ. A professor of mine who is a veteran missionary cautioned students in a comparative religion class that the old triumphal style of doing missions simply does not work because it creates a prideful monologue, while doing effective missions requires dialogue and willingness to hear the ideas of others. Furthermore, from an evangelical standpoint, it makes more sense to try and make an effective witness to our Muslim brothers rather than just try to compete with their numbers. Our cheif mission field should not be our children who in all likelihood will inherit our Christian faith, but the unchurched populations of the earth.
In response to the theological support Mohler gives for his position, I contend that Mohler's argument is steeped with Old Testament Theology, with little regard to the revalation found in the New Testament. Take, for example, this selection:
Christians must recognize that this rebellion against parenthood represents nothing less than an absolute revolt against God's design. The Scripture points to barrenness as a great curse and children as a divine gift. The Psalmist declared: "Behold, children are a gift of the Lord, the fruit of the womb is a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of one's youth. How blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them; they will not be ashamed when they speak with their enemies in the gate." [Psalm 127: 3-5]
Mohler's argument fails to recognize that the Ancient Hebrew theology which produced the perception of "barrenness as a great curse and children as a divine gift" contained no concept of afterlife. For most Hebrews before the Babylonian Exile, producing children was the only way to continue to exist after death, if only in a small way. Even in the Gospel period, Jesus encounters a powerful group called the Saducees, who did not believe in the resurrection.
I would also be interested in seeing how Mohler applies Paul's admonition to voluntary celibacy (1 Cor. 7:1,8-9) to his argument. According to Paul, celibacy is a tolerable option, if not an encouraged option, for Christians. Naturally this would produce no children... So where do we go from here?
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